


when the words hit (my heart stopped)

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: And Soothing It Away, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chris Being So In Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Schmoop, Sebastian Being Precious, True Love, Unfounded Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 22:12:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7124404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Chris,” Mackie says, his eyes wide. Chris’s phone is in his hand. His tone is too careful. “Now, don’t freak out.”</p>
<p>And of course there’s only one thing they’d know to approach him about with such caution, to prepare him and try to talk him down before he even scaled the heights, except he <i>knows</i> that. He knows that Sebastian's the only one who'd merit it, and Chris's heart’s already fucking pounding because oh, god.</p>
<p>"What happened to him?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the words hit (my heart stopped)

**Author's Note:**

> I did say that [luninosity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity) asked for Chris taking care of a hurt Sebastian, and where she later specified between physical and emotional, I'd already written both. Emotional was [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6990649). This one is the physical.

They’re the kind of words that contradict themselves on principle.

“Chris,” Mackie says, his eyes wide. Chris’s phone in his hand. His tone too careful. “Now, don’t freak out.”

And of course there’s only one thing they’d know to approach him with such caution, to prepare him and try to talk him down before he even scaled the heights, except he _knows_ that, and his heart’s already fucking pounding because oh, god.

“What happened to him?”

“Chris--”

“What _happened_ , Anthony?”

Anthony sighs. “Car accident.”

Chris’s heart fucking stops. It fucking _stops_ , because…

“Seb doesn’t have a car here.”

So if it was a car accident, and Seb _walks_ to set from his hotel, then.

Then--

“Chris, I don’t know any details, I just saw--”

“Where they’d take him?”

“General.” Anthony watches, or else, Chris thinks he watches, or maybe he follows, Chris doesn’t fucking know or frankly give a shit as he grabs his coat and gropes for his keys. 

“You’re not driving,” Anthony snatches his keys from his hand as soon as he finds them, and it’s only for how quick and easily it’s managed that Chris realizes he’s shaking, that his hands are shaking, and everything in him is fucking _trembling_.

“I’ll call a cab,” he snaps, lost, so fucking lost---

“I can take you,” Anthony offers quickly, but Chris just shakes his head and grabs for his phone out of Mackie’s grasp, because Anthony means well, but Anthony will obey laws when law has no meaning, Anthony will remain in the world when it could very well be ending, Anthony…

Fuck it.

“You’ll drive too slow.”

Chris runs, and leaves his keys with Mackie.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

Chris is a mess, and his chest fucking _hurts_ for the way his heart’s started a riot, or threatened a suicide, by the time he damn well runs to the ER desk.

“Stan,” he gasps out, eyes trying and failing to focus on the woman at triage. “Sebastian Stan, he could have, he, car accident, and I, _please_ \---” 

“Calm down, sweetie.” The woman stands, grabs his hands across the desk and looks him straight in the eye. Something about her reminds him of his mom, and so he listens when she squeezes his hands to draw his attention, when she directs him:

“Breathe, now, deep breath.”

He breathes.

“And out.”

He exhales.

“Again.” Her tone is firm, and he listens, and she watches him carefully as she speaks over her shoulder.

“Louise,” a nurse in grey scrubs looks up from a chart. “TDH still here?”

“For now.”

Louise sounds strange, the words sound off, but Chris can’t figure out why over the banging of his pulse and the effort of breathing. 

_For now_.

Oh dear god.

“Can you escort this man in that direction?” the desk nurse says, focus still on Chris even as she inspects the ID Chris doesn’t remember having passed her way. “Gentle, though,” she warns Louise with a tight smile. “Think he’s had a real scare.”

Chris is frozen, mostly, and so he welcomes Louise’s guiding hand on his shoulder because he doesn’t think he’d be able to move with any real aim or direction on his own. 

He’s led toward a door, and he sees the way the nurse knocks quick against it, a courtesy before opening, but he can’t hear it.

Fuck, but he’s never felt his heart _pound_ like this before.

“Chris?” 

And yet, for all its unprecedented pounding, at that voice around his name? 

Damn thing just fucking _stops_.

“Oh my god, what,” and Sebastian’s on his feet, the white of the sheets on the bed he’d been sitting on top a complete contrast to the absolutely healthy glow of that skin as Sebastian crosses to the door, eyes bright and open and _alive_ , and.

“Chris, Chris, baby, what is it? What _happened_?”” Sebastian’s got hands on Chris’s face, thumbs firm against Chris’s cheekbones: centering. That’s they’re thing, that’s what Sebastian does and it keeps Chris from falling any deeper and Sebastian was hurt, Sebastian was in an accident and Sebastian can’t be the one saving him, yet again.

“Chris, are you, is he---” Sebastian glances over Chris’s shoulder, and the leaning that causes brushes Sebastian’s chest against Chris’s arm: solid. Warm.

“Just scared,” a voice, the nurse’s chimes in. “We had a call to expect him.”

“Jesus,” Sebastian huffs, eyes drenched in care and concern now back on Chris, only on Chris, and Chris can really only process that he could feel the breath of Sebastian’s sigh on his skin like a real thing, like a truth.

But his heart still fucking _hurts_.

“Chris?” Sebastian braces hands, palms splayed wide to touch Chris’s pulse below his ear and cover both cheeks. “Chris, look at me,” and Chris thought he was, honestly, or else looking at the _want_ of him. He thought that he was, until Sebastian moves, and Chris realises his focus is shit. It might be shock.

It might be tears.

Might be both.

“Baby, come on, shh,” and Chris didn’t think he was making noises at all, didn’t feel like he was even breathing until Sebastian draws his attention to the world outside the rush of his own panicked blood: he’s gasping, and there’s a rasp to it, a moan in it, and it claws out of his throat, gashes up and bleeds on down.

Well, fuck.

“Shh, breathe with me, sweetheart, easy,” and it’s almost rote, etched into him, almost Pavlovian, the tone that Sebastian says it, calls him _sweetheart_ , a thing he’s never known before, not like that. It’s a thing he has to hear, and can’t replicate in his own head because it’s so full of Sebastian that even as Chris himself is _filled_ to the brim with a need for everything Sebastian _is_ , he cannot match that voice around that word as it’s shaped by Sebastian’s lips, as it’s colored by Sebastian’s feeling, Sebastian’s love.

“ _Easy_ ,” Sebastian murmurs, stroking up and down Chris’s jaw on either side until Chris can see him, straight and clear.

Until Sebastian _recognizes_ that Chris _sees_ him. 

“What _happened_?” Sebastian asks him, so soft, so open.

Something Chris can fall into, and god, but he’s close. Heart about to tear. Lungs about to burst. Skin about to split and leave him bare.

“You were in a car accident,” Chris says, far away even to his own ears. Truths and lies and hopes and fears all mish-mashed into something he can’t hold. 

“I was,” Sebastian frowns, eyes screwed up, confused. “Chris.” His hands haven’t left Chris’s face, and they stroke along Chris’s cheekbones, steady. Steady.

“Chris, the lady whose car it was, she texted you,” he says it slow, watches to see if it sinks in and Chris knows that Sebastian traces the way it rebounds, doesn’t take. 

“Everything’s fine,” Sebastian says carefully, tries that route instead, draws circles on Chris’s skin to calm, to soothe. “It was stupid---”

“Bad is Sebastian,” Chris recites, the words backlit and burned on the backs of his eyelids. “Had an accident car into. Taken General.” Chris reaches for his phone, flips the screen with shaking hands to show the text that nearly stopped his goddamn heart.

“Fucking,” Sebastian takes a sharp breath in, blanches horribly. “Oh _hell_ , I told her to the voice memo thing, not the,” his hand flips in the air in a way that clenches around Chris’s heart because oh god, oh god he had thought he’d lost that, just that motion of Sebastian _hands_ \--- “Not the speech-to-text thing.”

And Chris notices, then, where he couldn’t before, that one of the hands that’d been holding his face is wrapped in gauze and tape, that three of the fingers are splinted. He stares, and it’s a burn of acid that greets the way he swallows, but Sebastian’s hands are back on his face before it gets too bad. Sebastian is staring him down and keeping him here before he can get lost to it all again.

“Babe, it’s Sebastian,” Sebastian says softly, and reaches down for Chris’s hand, holds it so fucking tight and stares straight into Chris’s eyes as he speaks, as he strokes across Chris’s knuckles, back and forth and back again. “Had an accident with a car window, they’re taking me to General.” Sebastian lifts Chris’s hand and kisses his wrist long, holds lips there long and warm and _real_. “I swear that what I said, baby. I said it’s nothing, and that I’d be on set as soon as I could. Chris, I wouldn’t have, I _swear_.”

“They said,” Chris swallows, his mind still spinning with Sebastian’s words, with what he knows and maybe doesn’t know, what the feel of Sebastian’s lips on his skin. “They called you, TDH,” he remembers the nurse saying, and the way his heart had clenched for every terrible unknown. “They, what does that mean’s wrong, I---”

“Oh my god,” Sebastian groans, and leans in to kiss Chris straight on the lips, like the touch will full the sharp edge of his fear.

And it does. Just a little.

“No, no it’s nothing, I’m _fine_ , it’s,” he sighs, and rolls his eyes, and he is _Sebastian_ , though and through, and Chris is struck but the pain in his chest, in his heart, taking on a new sort of feel, a new kind of meaning. 

“Tall Dark and Handsome,” Sebastian says, cheeks reddening just a little. “They laughed when I told them how this happened,” he lifts his hand, embarrassed. “And they decided to razz me from there out. I told them I was spoken for, though,” he looks at Chris, and only takes a second before he leans in and kisses him again, firm and full: “Believe me.”

“It’s, you,” Chris watches Sebastian’s chest rising and falling, rising and falling, before he tries to mimic the motion. “You’re okay.” 

“Sprained two fingers,” Sebastian raises his taped digits in evidence. “They hurt like a bitch.” He grins a little sheepishly. “I might ask you to kiss them better when this comes off. If you’re willing.” 

Chris frowns, the pulse in him that’d been starting to calm ratcheting up a little once again.

“Willing?”

“If you’re not too mad at me,” Sebastian says, glancing up through his lashes just a little. “For worrying you.” He grabs Chris’s hands and cups them together, kisses where they touch. 

“I was gonna call, but I just got back here from the x-rays, and they taped me up in there, and there’s no phones in the ER, and mine fell out underneath that tire of the car-in-question,” Sebastian glances at Chris’s phone, still showing the terrifying text-message from an unknown number. “Which is why the driver messaged you for me. She felt terrible about it, but it’s not like the kid knew any better---” 

“Kid?” Chris croaks out, and goddamnit, he’s shaking again.

He’s pretty sure it’s again. He thinks there was a point where it’d stopped.

Maybe not, though.

“Jesus, come here,” Sebastian never lets go of his hand as he scoot back on the bed, and drags Chris with him. “Come on, here,” he pats the starchy sheets. “Lay back.” 

And by that, Sebastian apparently means lay against him, feel him everywhere, and that’s perfectly okay for Chris, who curls against him and settles a hand against Sebastian’s chest like a lifeline to grasp. 

“Just breathe, okay,” Sebastian hums, soothes, and Chris only realises he’s crying when Sebastian’s shirt starts to grown damp under his cheek. “Let everything out and breathe, baby. I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, I didn’t, I swear.”

Which Chris knows. He knows.

Sebastian’s heartbeat is underneath him: proof. Perfect.

“Tell me about this kid,” Chris sighs, and sinks into the feeling that chest against his body, lifting up and down under his weight.

“Right, yeah,” and Sebastian’s good at this, maybe the best at this, because he gets that Chris just needs words to prove he’s read, just needs touch to prove he’s living, just need to lose himself in the ebb and flow of a voice and a heartbeat that is so integral to his world it’s almost pathetic, it’s almost terrifying, except that it’s the only right thing in Chris’s universe. It’s the only reason he understands, anymore.

“Right, so I’m walking from Starbucks, ‘cause of course, right,” Sebastian smirks, and Chris smiles a little, because he’s so warm, he’s so perfect, he’s _Chris’s_ , and he’s still _here_.

“So it’s a red light when I see this kid, no more than two years old and she drops a stuffed rabbit out of the back window. Starts bawling, poor thing, so I just jogged over, picked it up, and popped it back through the window. Kid’s happy, proceeds to clap her hands against anything she can touch.”

And Chris can see it: Sebastian’s too-big heart running over to help at the first cry, the first sign of need. Chris loves him. 

Chris loves him so fucking _much_.

“She just so happened to touch the button for the window while my hand was still on said window,” Sebastian adds sheepishly, raising his taped hand. “Hence these.”

And Chris’s stomach plummets a little, because the physical reminder of why they’re sitting on an ER bed, of why Chris’s ribs are still sore, why his heartbeat’s still fasted and heavier than it should be: the reminder of all the could have beens starts to take hold.

But Sebastian sees it. And he dives back into the story.

Dives into the fray of Chris’s mind and rescues him back to shore.

“The mom was so upset, but like I said, the kid didn’t know any better, and then she started to cry _again_ when I got stuck in the window,” Sebastian chews his lower lip for a second. “Though the mom rolled it down pretty fuckin’ quick, no problem.”

Of course, of _course_ Sebastian would compliment a person on how quickly they saved his fucking fingers from being crushed in their car window.

Of fucking _course_.

“But then she takes her foot off the brake and my phone, which had slipped out of my pocket because fuck if I could have anything go right in this story,” Sebastian rushes back in, shaking his head. “Well, _that_ was the real casualty, because the car rolled forward over it in the half-second before she stuck it into park and put the hazards on. Brand new one, too, and you know how much I went back and forth on that thing.”

Chris does know. Intimately.

Chris is going to buy Sebastian, like, every phone ever and keep him pressed against his chest in their bed, basically forever. Maybe.

“Someone had already called 911, so they were quick, and I knew the only thing I’d need was someone to just tape these but I didn’t want you to worry, so I asked Jess, the mom, if she’d send a quick message,” and Sebastian pauses, and his heart under Chris’s hand kicks a little harder for a minute while he presses lips to the top of Chris’s head.

“And we know some of those sets are shit for getting actual calls, but texts almost always come through, so I went ahead with that route, except that was apparently the worst idea ever, and---”

“I thought I’d lost you,” Chris murmurs into Sebastian’s chest, which halts the words, and leaves just the sound of his heartbeat, his breath, and Chris’s eyes are still streaming, and yes he fucking buries himself in the heat of Sebastian, nestled against him here as he gives rasping voice to every heartbreaking truth that makes up his world.

“I cannot lose you,” he hisses, his throat too tight to make real noise, to give real sound. “I cannot _ever_ lose you.”

“Chris,” Sebastian starts, but he stops when Chris nuzzles just that bit closer, when Chris’s breath catches loud and wet and devastated, full of too much and too afraid of losing.

“Too much of me is tied up in you, Sebastian,” Chris speaks into his neck. “Too much to keep, to do, to, to,” he gasps, and oh, there’s the hurt back in his heart again just _thinking_ about what could have been. 

“Too much, for me to _be_ , if you were gone.”

“I’m not gone,” Sebastian whispers, strong hands around Chris. “I’m right here.”

“I know,” Chris nods into his chest. “Thank god, I, fuck,” Chris tries to catch his breath, and zeroes back into the steady beat of Seb’s heart to teach him how. 

“I know.”

Sebastian’s arms tighten around him a little bit more, knowing innately what Chris needs.

“I love you,” Chris says, like it could contain the truth of what Sebastian _means_. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Chris,” Sebastian tells him: immediate. No thought to it, only the truth of the unguarded soul. “More than I think you’ll ever know.”

“No,” Chris shakes his head, because that’s not true. “No,” because that means Sebastian doesn’t understand how _much_ Chris _feels_ , and that’s not okay. 

“I _love_ you. All of me, everything, I,” and Chris damn well chokes on that everything. On the feeling, on the what ifs, on the future and all it could be, and all he stands to lose just for having. All he _cannot lose_.

“Don’t ever leave me, okay?”

They both know it’s useless, it’s silly, it’s impossible. But Chris needs to say it.

And Sebastian doesn’t disappoint. He wraps his arms ever tighter around Chris. Brings him ever closer to his chest, his heart.

“Okay,” Sebastian says, like it’s simple. Like it’s truth.

Chris breathes, and his own heart feels like it could steady. Like it will steady again, if he’s allowed to stay just like this.

“Okay.”


End file.
